Tuesday, November 29, 2016

What? Did you really BELIEVE I had gone for good? Just because I haven’t
blogged here for months and months? C’mon. A girl can be in a PHASE. It’s
normal in this abysmal, intensely stressful time that we’re living in. You
should, in fact, be consoling ME. I’ve missed recording practically half a year
of my life! Not that I’d forget it easily (what a roller-coaster!), but still.
What if I suffer from a weird case of memory loss? Anything is possible. I live
in the world’s most polluted city (I think), where pollution isn’t just in the
air but also in people’s MINDS. It takes a lot just to be alive, so you better
be thankful that I’m HERE. I’ll get back to being regular very soon, before the
year ends, I promise! Till then, this is a quickie update on life and random
blah, blah.

#1. A quintessential holiday!

After years
and years and years, we (my family) FINALLY decided to make a trip to the
beauuutifuuullll Australia! *shrieks and bounces with excitement, even though
the holiday got over months ago* (Again, it’s normal to feel so.) We spent a
good 15 days frolicking around Queensland (mostly in Brisbane and Gold Coast)
and was it fun or whaaat???

~Things that were FUN~

SO MANY
EXPERIENCES!

a. Living in
a countryside house = such low levels of traffic as never seen before!

b. Witnessing
EVERYONE following traffic rules. Flawless, freakishly awesome traffic rules.
That’s also what makes it possible for people to drive sports cars. Oh, also
riding in a sports car!

c. Ferrying
around in a ferry that acts as public transport (!!!) on the Brisbane river
right in the middle of the city!

d. Walking
through a rainforest, tripping over old, HUGE, gnarled roots (that was just me,
though), climbing to the very top of a tree-top walk (just me, too! I am
DARING), and discovering you are scared of rope bridges (perhaps not as daring
as you thought) because no matter how fabulous you are, you still can’t fly!
(I am logical.)

e. Feeding
sharp-clawed, multi-coloured parrots (that’s how they come there) on your palm
and watching with amazement how they manage to eat the insides of the seeds and
leave the shells in your hand.

f. Taking a
membership of a casino the very first day of arrival (HAHAHA!) and not going
there a second time (because, no time, not because it wasn’t awesome).

g. Having
barbeque picnics everywhere!! There are electric, fully-functional barbeques
and picnic tables everywhere you see. Australia understands that people
need food and fun in life!

h. Getting a
kookaburra to pose for you, for free! I didn’t imagine that when we would be
going for a real, old-style barbeque-using-wood picnic, we would actually spot
a kookaburra. I could barely keep my camera straight, I was SO excited. The
bird obliged (I guess he/she was used to it?) and I clicked away.

i. Also
feeding birds (despite uncle’s warnings) with your hands. Then leaving a pot of
water on the gone-out-but-still-hot barbeque grill (to be later made into chai. We Indians.
*shakes head*) AND all our stuff (just like that!) while going for a trail
walk, and half the time my mind recuperating from the shock of having left all
our belongings in the open (despite uncle’s reassurances). And then coming back
to find it all ransacked by CROWS.

j. Playing
with a Frisbee after all these years, in the middle of the woods, with
wallabies munching grass nearby. Trying to feed wallabies but failing.

Can we move
to water now??? Please? There were a LOT of things; I can’t possibly list them
all. The trip point was supposed to be ONE point, for God’s sake!

m. Having
your feet slowly sink in the soft sand as water gushes over them… feeling like
you’re standing at the edge of the Pacific Ocean and feeling a nice kind of
dizzy with waves gradually coming up to you! And then feeling your heart drop
for a mini-second as the wave rushes back, and you begin to slip as the sand
slides from beneath your feet (and you realize you can’t swim!). OMG The Gold
Coast beach!!! It was also the first proper beach of my life and it was gorgeous!
It’s considered one of the cleanest beaches, and so true! There wasn’t a
SPECK of rubbish anywhere along the long beach.

n. Watching the sun’s golden glow rise in the sky as you
stand in the water, its overpowering pull making you feel warm and dizzy again.
Also watching surfer dudes surfing (what else?) and barely keeping from crying
out loud as they just flop in the water sometimes… right in the SEA! Don’t
people love their lives or what? Don’t they know that surfer dudes are a rare species?

Mesmerised by the sunrise ^_^

o. Walking on a high sea bed to reach an
island and collecting lovely shells (despite G’s warnings that they might
contain a dragon or something. Ha, I lied. He used the words ‘snail’ and
‘insect’ but aren’t they the same? Cute and pet-worthy?). In any case, I did
what I did because I had to (where else would I be found collecting shells in
my life?), and it was great fun! We also saw tiny soldier crabs!

SO MANY SHELLS TO PICK! AAAAHHH!

p. Insisting
(that was pure me) on going to the very edge of a fishing post to be as close
to the water as possible, not caring that it jutted into the sea and had sharks
(uncle said). Finding G trailing along because of course he wanted to ensure I
didn’t end up tripping straight into the water (like such a silly thing could
ever happen). Did I mention that the water was mysteriously blue-GREEN?

o. Reveling
at a theme park and being surprised with a huge, splash-like ride that went backward,
down the slope! My heart had only just begun to beat when it happened AGAIN
in another ride. ALSO. Staring open-mouthed at penguins (wheee!), a sea lion,
DOLPHINS(!!), a polar bear, sharks, sting rays, loads of fish, star fish, sea
urchin and a KRAKEN!! (Okay, that one was mechanical, but still! It
moved!)

SHARK!!

~Things
that were SHOCKING~

1.
Everywhere is so CLEAN. How can a place not have hideous spit-and-paan
stains at least somewhere?? Not even a TINY bit of waste paper or
wrapper on the roads? I must admit, I was secretly GLOWING. Being such a sucker
for throwing-waste-in-the-dustbins, I adored feeling “at home” looking at
people throwing things where they belong rather than having them staring at me
when I carry waste in my arms till I reach a dustbin. Seriously. At one
point (while drooling at a WB characters’ parade) I didn’t even realize I was
leaning against an actual dustbin. I’d become so attached to them.

2. Strangers
smile at you AND IT ISN’T WEIRD! People are generally nice to each other. They
make conversations with strangers who are having a picnic by the beach, on top
of a hill, or even next to a cemetery (the strangers being us, and yes we did
that!). They wish you a nice day even when you leave their shop without buying
anything (and they also wouldn’t attach themselves to you like leeches until
you either bought something or left in disgust. Am I making too many indirect
comparisons???) This is why travelling is important. It makes you believe that
what you know about people is but a minuscule fraction of humanity.

3. There are
so many clean public restrooms, you actually won’t have to worry about
nature’s calls when you’re out. In fact, you might even welcome them! I can
rant and compare this one at least, as it is so obvious we don’t have
even a teeny weeny portion of such amenities here. But no seriously, you can
absolutely go ANYWHERE, including JUNGLES and you’ll find functional, clean
restrooms so you can enjoy the mesmerizing beauty of the place without such
interruptions (which turn into emergencies where I live).

Basically,
it was beyond awesome.

*sigh* I had
to write more points. I’ll just sum them up below.

#2: Making major career decisions

In short,
feeling like a wreck for months and months and turning into a monster bred in
captivity because the job uncertainty was SO STRONG. UGH. I hate when stupid
things bring me down. But I, like the full-blown warrior that I am, with the
support of my loyal cadets (okay, BECAUSE of the cadets), FOUGHT and WON.
Yoohoo! I don’t know if what’s happened is good or bad. It definitely seems awesome
as of now. Which means it must be awesome. With the new year, I’ll be in a
MBA-kind of job rather than working as an editor for children’s books (what a
change!) but I am delighted about it. Call me a hypocrite, like I care.
People change. This is proof. (But I will keep doing editing projects, if I get
any. I totally should, because I have experience and I KNOW stuff.)

#3: Reading books

Obviously.
I’ve mastered the art of reading so that you’d find me reading books even when
I’m dead. My ghost will be by my bookshelf or in one of the awesome libraries
of the world where I hadn’t been while alive. Some of the books I’ve devoured
this year:

a. Gone Girl
by Gillian Flynn (It sucked)

b. City of Bones, City of Ashes and City
of Glass by Cassandra Clare (The series is called The Mortal Instruments and I
hadn’t read it while it was receiving attention from the world. It is GOOD, but
so emotionally draining that I might take a break before jumping into the rest
of the series.)

c. Six books
from the Dork Diaries series by Rachel Renee Russell (Just to relive teen
years. These were breezing, time-pass reads. Not that great.)

d. The Lord
of the Rings series (wayyyyyy more awesome in books. The movies are GHASTLY.)

e. Jurassic Park and The Lost World by
Michael Crichton (You will never regret the books. WAY more scary than the
boom-bam movies. Dinosaurs don’t just SLAM into view. They SNEAK. No points for
guessing which is more terrorizing.)